Video Premiere: Girl Talk & Freeway Featuring Waka Flocka Flame “Tolerated”

Girl Talk and Freeway are joining forces for an EP called Broken Ankles. The six-track EP follows a recent explosion of producer/rapper collaborations that many fans have grown to love. For Girl Talk and Free, the two are viewed as an odd couple of sorts because of their contrasting styles. While Girl Talk has succeeded with his sample-based madness, the Philly rapper has made a career out of hard raps over traditional gritty production. It’s very fitting that the two come together since their aesthetics have the potential to make something very memorable.

Today, XXL is premiering the first single “Tolerated” featuring Waka Flocka Flame. The video teaser showed only a glimpse of the mayhem. In the full version, the pair is pitted against their haters and go absolutely wild on them. There’s a lot of blood—limbs are literally ripped apart—and people are getting thrown through car windows. "We think it’s a video that’s gonna last, that people are gonna be talking about," Free says. "We just don’t think it’s gonna be one of those fly-by-the-night videos." "That was definitely the goal," Girl Talk adds. "There’s just so many videos that are cool and you watch them for 24 hours on WorldStar and the rotation’s over and you never check them out again. We really wanted to have something that stuck and revisit. I’m really happy how it really came out and all the people that worked on it. I can’t imagine a tighter video."

Broken Ankles is releasing on Apr. 8, but "Tolerated" is available now on iTunes. For more, read our interview with the duo where they talk the “Tolerated” video, working together, and hoping to release a full-length collaborative project in the future.

XXL: Tell me about “Tolerated.”
Girl Talk: Free and I did a bunch of records together. We got the EP coming out which is just a few of them. To me, this is one of the first songs that really clicked. As soon as I first heard it, I kind of felt like it could have this cinematic quality to it. This is the one song so far, it’s the only one that I’ve been dropping in my sets and it’s been translating well for me live. I think it’s nice. Compared to some of the other material, I think this is a nice bridge between Freeway stuff and my stuff.

Freeway: I just think it’s an amazing record. The record got great energy. Even before we got Waka on it, we thought it was a good record. Like you said, it’s a great mirrors to what both of us do. It’s a crazy live performance song. I perform it at my show’s too, even when I perform by myself and I always get a great reaction from the crowd. They don’t know the song, but by the time I get to the end of it and to the sing along part, they singing it with me. It’s just an amazing song so I am just ready for the world to hear it.

Why did you guys choose Waka?
Freeway: I mean I always wanted to work with Waka anyway. It was shocking cause around the same time he had DM me on Twitter. 'Yo, let’s get some work done.' I’m like, 'Hey, that’s crazy.' When Gregg hit me and said 'We gonna have Waka on it.' I’m like, 'Hey, that’s perfect.' He just hit me and said let’s get some work done so it’s crazy.

Girl Talk: We had a few different ideas of people going in. I do think the energy is perfect. I’m a big fan of Waka. I was actually not sure how Freeway would feel about it. I wasn’t sure. To me, it’s a similar energy of really different styles as far as the lyrics go and content and that sort of stuff. So, I wasn’t sure how Free would be feeling the idea. And then he told me he was a big fan as well so I thought it was just a really good fit. I felt both for the project in general too, it just felt like everything that we were doing, I wanted to [do] something that was little unexpected. Nothing that was forced or contrived. Something that you wouldn’t expect. To me, if I wasn’t involved in this, I would be pretty excited and surprised to see a Waka and a Freeway record coming out.

From the trailer, the video is looking pretty crazy. Who thought of the concept of the video?
Girl Talk: I kind of spearheaded the concept a bit and I worked with this director Allen [Cordell], who kind of helped flesh out the ideas. I just thought it’d be cool to do a video where the premise is me and Freeway walking down the street and people coming at us more or less. The song is kind of an anti-hater sort of song. I thought it’d be cool to have a bunch of people bumping into us and give us a hard time. Basically, representing the hater and we would go through the video and things would slowly escalate to bumpings to as far as over the top as possible. We had a lot of ideas going into it, we wasn’t sure what we’d actually physically do. And then, I think at the end of the day we put a lot of time and effort and decide to just go all out. I think the video is pretty absurd at this point.

This was a different video for you Free. Was it difficult stepping out of your comfort zone?
Freeway: Nah. Actually, a lot of people don’t know that I used to do martial arts when I was little. The video is real active and we actually have a scene where we do a fighting scene. Me and Girl is fighting a bunch of people. It felt good. This is what I do.

Broken Ankles is the first time you two are working together. Do you think you guys will make something fuller in the future?
Freeway: I’m definitely with it and I’m definitely looking forward to it. I’m pretty sure we’ll get some work done.

Girl Talk: Like I mentioned before, we do have a lot of records that aren’t coming out on this that I am really into. I think Freeway and I agreed on this was we recorded a lot. Let’s put something together that makes sense beginning to end and make it as tight as possible. We got a lot of songs like literally probably 20 other songs that we recorded that are not making its way to this. I would love to do more work in the future.